‘Apprenticeship has really turned my life around’

When Kajol Miah travels on a crowded Tube he is often the only one smiling.

Other passengers may wonder what this young gym worker has to be so happy about — but after five years of “hell” living on the streets and in and out of prison, Kajol, 20, says he still can’t hide the joy he feels that his life is finally back on track.

This former criminal has undergone a dramatic transformation since he got involved with City Gateway. Thanks to the charity he turned his love of exercise into a paying job by embarking on an apprenticeship with Fitness First and then winning a full-time role.

Last week he was named London’s Apprentice of the Year by the National Apprenticeship Service and is now in the running for the national award.

The Evening Standard has joined forces with City Gateway to launch Ladder for London, a campaign to help jobless young adults onto the first rung of work through paid apprenticeships.

City Gateway trains hundreds of young people like Kajol every year, but struggles to place them in apprenticeships with companies because of a shortage of jobs. Currently 120,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are unemployed in London; one in four. That is why we are asking you, the readers of the Standard, to ask your company to help out by hiring an apprentice.

So far more than 450 companies have enquired on our Ladder for London website about hiring one or more apprentices.

Kajol’s apprenticeship has brought him a job, an income and hope for a stable life and to top it all he met his girlfriend — who he credits with helping him to stay on the straight and narrow — during his training at City Gateway.

He said: “It is amazing to get this chance. To this day I still laugh when I step on the Tube and look at everyone because they are all so sad. People are so miserable. I am sitting there laughing because they don’t realise what life is.

“They are seeing the world — they are not behind bars! Why are they looking so down?

“I wake up every day smiling now. People think I am a nutter but I am just happy every day. It’s wicked.”

After dropping out of school in year seven and living on the streets of east London, Kajol was sent to a young offender institution for nine months at the age of 15 after a robbery. After a first contact with City Gateway he fell back into his old ways and was sent back to jail for three years — and realised he had to change his life. On release he got back in touch with City Gateway, completed a six-month pre-apprenticeship course and then began his apprenticeship with Fitness First. He said: “Without City Gateway it would have been a nightmare. I have a history of violence — who would have taken me on as an employee?

“The apprenticeship has dramatically turned my life around.

“If I was speaking to other bosses in London considering taking on an apprentice I would say ‘go for it’.”